United States
Israeli-Syrian Talks: Back In a Deep Freeze
Israel's terms for peace with Syria as revealed in the Israeli-leaked American document speak of a military redeployment with the settlements remaining in place. While Syria is responding favorably to Israeli demands for normalization and security, Israel's ideas are more a road-map for permanent occupation than a plan for a reasonable peace agreement.
Do Immigrants Have First Amendment Rights?
“War on Terrorism Hits LA,” the headline of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner screamed on January 27, 1987. The Los Angeles Eight, as the seven Palestinians and a Kenyan came to be known, are still fighting deportation today. Dangerous security risks? The Immigration and Naturalization Service said so. International terrorists? The INS still argues that the Eight were members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). These charges were partly based on secret evidence, including photos showing the Eight distributing a “subversive” magazine published in Damascus entitled Democratic Palestine.
Deja Vu All Over Again?
Two decades after Iran's Islamic revolution of 1978-79, another US administration has been surprised by violent demonstrations on the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities. The Clinton Administration and members of Congress watched with alarm and some helplessness as Iranian student protests persisted and spread–despite official warnings, the brutality of religiously inspired vigilantes claiming to protect the Islamic Republic's interests and carefully orchestrated counter-demonstrations. The US Department of State has reacted cautiously to these developments, while members of Congress–usually eager to criticize the Clinton Administration's intelligence failures–have remained silent so far.
Mubarak in Washington
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak visits Washington this week at a time when US-Egyptian relations appear to be harmonious. Yet beneath the surface, relations may not be as cordial as they seem. Particularly discordant notes in the current US-Egyptian relationship concern free trade, regional economic integration and Egypt's human rights record. These issues will be high on the agenda during meetings between US and Egyptian officials this week.
Short-Circuiting the Media/Policy Machine
Media coverage of the February 1998 showdown with Iraq highlighted subtle but significant changes in the relationship between the mainstream media and US foreign policymaking. Although the major media — despite some alleged soul searching by media professionals [1] after the Gulf war — have changed little since the pro-war hysteria of 1991, activists are discovering more ways to obstruct the media juggernaut and influence policymaking — sometimes by actually using the mass media.
“Is This Case for Real?”
Michel Shehadeh is one of the defendants in the 10-year old LA 8 case. The following are excerpts from an interview with him conducted by Joan Mandell on February 8, 1997.
You have been wanting to write something about the case. Have you always wanted to be a writer or were you motivated by the case?
When the case started, I was studying journalism at the California State at Long Beach. I had wanted to be a film director. Before I left Palestine, I wanted to be an actor. My father told me, if you have the talent you can be an actor, but you should learn a profession in case you do not make it.
Camille Mansour, Beyond Alliance
Camille Mansour, Beyond Alliance: Israel and US Foreign Policy (Columbia, 1994).
This long overdue inquiry into what Camille Mansour, with typical understatement, calls “the privileged character of American-Israeli relations”(p. xi) provides an exceptionally lucid analysis of a central feature of US policy in the Middle East.
Column: Funding Agents
During World War II, the British ambassador in Cairo, Lord Killearn, complained about the sudden influx of American experts into the country under the auspices of US Lend-Lease assistance. Inquiries into the exact size of railroad track gauge in the Egyptian countryside, he was convinced, were a thinly disguised effort to seize economic control of Egypt (from Great Britain) after the war. Egyptian nationalists launched similar attacks on American research and assistance projects in the 1950s, compelling Gamal Abdel Nasser, at an early point in his 18-year rule, to insist that Egyptians get over their “complexes” about foreign aid.
From Broadcasting to Narrowcasting
Transnational media conglomerates and television networks from RCA to Associated Press to CNN have created and dominated a model of broadcasting which might be called “centralized global broadcasting.” Worldwide restructurings and rapid technological advances, though, have ushered in a new model of television which could be termed “decentralized global narrowcasting.” Middle Eastern television programs in Los Angeles are an example of developments in mass media which have led to the emergence of so-called minority and ethnic television and video. Their programs constitute part or the dynamic and multifaceted popular cultures produced and consumed by immigrant and exile communities in southern California.
“Giving Good Bite”
Network researchers who book “experts” say they look for someone who can “give good bite.” Two of the most conspicuous prime-time sound bite experts during the war against Iraq were Anthony Cordesman and Fouad Ajami. These sketches were prepared by Sandrine Bretonniere.
Anthony Cordesman: “We Must Strike Again”
Anthony Cordesman was ABC’s Gulf war “military expert,” and appeared on other networks as well. At the height of the war, he was the analyst who showed up most often as a network news source — 11 times in 14 days (Extra!, May 1991). Another survey ranked him the most quoted “expert,” with 56 appearances. (Steele, “Enlisting Experts”).
Who Owns the News?
Television
ABC
Capital Cities bought ABC, with its 230 affiliated stations, for $3.4 billion in 1986. Also owns: 8 TV stations; 9 dailies, 74 weeklies (Kansas City Star); radio networks with 3,000 affiliated stations; 21 radio stations; a cable programming company; some 60 publications (Women’s Wear Daily, Compute!, Modern Photography). The largest shareholder is Omaha investor Warren Buffett.
CBS
Laurence Tisch, owner of Loews Hotel chain (and active in pro-Israel fundraising), bought a controlling share in 1986. Henry Kissinger is a CBS board member. Also owns: 7 TV stations; 21 radio stations; two radio networks.
NBC
Power Structure of the American Media
me•di•a pl. of medium 2. an intervening thing through which a force acts or an effect is produced 3. any means, agency or instrument; specif., a means of communication that reaches the general public and carries advertising.
—Webster’s New World Dictionary
American Jews and Palestine
In 1988, in the midst of the intifada, American Jews mustered their forces in opposition to an Israeli government policy and forced the government to back down. At issue was the Israeli government’s decision to change the Law of Return to recognize only Orthodox converts to Judaism. The same American Jewish leaders who vigorously denounced and tried to silence any Jew who dared to speak out against the Israeli occupation and its violation of Palestinian human rights lost not a moment in their rush to criticize Israel publicly on what came to be known as the “Who-Is-A-Jew” question. The pressure worked, and the Israeli government retreated.
Bush Locks Horns with Shamir
On January 21, six days into the US air war against Iraq, Israeli Finance Minister Yitzhak Modai took advantage of Washington’s praise for Israel’s “restraint” in the face of 11 Scud missile attacks to drop a bombshell of his own. Before the assembled Jerusalem press corps, he advised visiting Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger that Israel would require an additional $13 billion dollars from the US at the conclusion of the war, $3 billion as “compensation” for the bombing and $10 billion in loan guarantees for the anticipated immigration of Soviet Jews.
Message of National Churches of Christ on Gulf Crisis
A Message of National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA on the Gulf and Middle East Crisis, November 14-16, 1990
[Excerpts]
We stand at a unique moment in human history, when all around us seemingly impregnable walls are being broken down and deep historical enmities are being healed. And yet, ironically, at such a moment, our own nation seems to be poised at the brink of war in the Middle East. “What then are we to say about these things?” (Romans 8:31)….
Responsibilities of the US Peace Movement
Once again the American peace movement faces the threat of war. In the 1960s and 1970s it was Vietnam, in the 1980s Central America and the nuclear threat, and now it is Arabia. This dangerous moment calls for a major change of direction for peace and anti-intervention forces. Activities underway before the crisis — the peace dividend campaign, redefining global security — have been sidetracked. Everything now depends on the outcome of the crisis in the Middle East.
Although press coverage has been scant, many groups in cities across the country have already begun organizing, and a growing movement is emerging. Most groups are united around five political demands:
